Bauhaus Berlin

Due to the repressive political measures of the National Socialists and
the drastic cutbacks in funding, only a limited amount of work was possible
during the Bauhaus’s last phase in Berlin. After the premises were searched and
the classrooms sealed by the police and the SA, the paramilitary branch of the
NSDAP, in April 1933, regular teaching activities were no longer possible.
Instead, the brief and dramatic Berlin phase led many professors and students to
move elsewhere in Germany or to emigrate.

On 30th September 1932, the Bauhaus Dessau was dissolved following the
NSDAP’s victory in the municipal elections of 1931. The move to Berlin was
organised by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who was the third Bauhaus director from 1930,
following on from Walter Gropius and Hannes Meyer. In October 1931, the Bauhaus
masters and students resumed their work in an abandoned telephone factory in
Berlin-Steglitz. However, the premises had already been searched and sealed by
the police and the SA on 11th April 1933. In the process, 32 students were
arrested. A reopening would only have been possible under conditions dictated by
the political powers. Because these were unacceptable to Mies van der Rohe, the
teaching staff dissolved the Bauhaus on 20th July 1933. A commemorative plaque
now stands on Birkbuschstraße 49, near the Bauhaus’s last place of activity,
which no longer exists.

After the dissolution of the Bauhaus in Berlin, a large number of those
who taught and studied at the Bauhaus emigrated contributing greatly to the global
dissemination of the Bauhaus concept.